Duchess of Malfi - Interpretations + Context Flashcards
What was the reaction when it was performed in Shakespeare’s globe in 2014
One paper called it a ‘grisly tragedy’, another a ‘gory melodrama’
What is the significance of Italy
Birthplace of the renaissance and centre of Catholic authority - provoked Jacobean dramatists with a horrid fascination
Potent theatrical metaphor - allowed dramatists to obliquely criticise the favouritism of James I court and to common on the religious hypocrisy under the guise of attacking scarlet-cloaked cardinals
What is the play based on
There was a real-life Duchess of Amalfi who was widowed in 1498, married and fled from her brothers
Webster took the story from a book called Palace Pleasure and embroidered it with ‘great skill’
Why is Webster’s heroine/protagonist unusual at the time
Focuses on a woman who exercises independent political power
How does the Duchess reverse the gender roles
Teasing and wooing Antonio
Also breaks the social and political obligation that the nobility marry their equals
Webster bases his plot on………….., every character has a secret with many episodes in the play depicting……….or overhearing
Secrecy
Spying
How does T.S.Elliot describe Webster
“Much possessed by death”
What does poet Rupert Brooke state
Talked about the “Foul and indestructible vitality” of Webster’s characters (these plays are about life and its awful and inevitable moral compromises, rather than about death)
Webster’s scalpel uncovers the “skull beneath the skin” - as he explores without favour, how flawed humans love, love and plot against a background of dispassionate self-interest
What do many of Webster’s other plays feature (The White Devil)
Teat lawyers and the legal system with bitterness - suggesting his personal detachment from it
What does Emma Smith state
“Rather than being possessed by death, Webster’s worlds show us the desperate struggle to survive in a corrupted society”
“The play’s unambivalent………………..becomes clear when we compare Webster’s………with that of his source, Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’
Femeinocentric
Title
What does Dympna Callaghan sate about the Duchess’ predicament
“Webster’s widowed Duchess escapes neither the confinement nor the brutality so often meted out to woman in the real world since her wicked brothers…seek to destroy her”
“In defying her brothers…the Duchess……………………………………….(Dympna Callaghan)
Transgresses a cultural prejudice against widows who remarried
In Elizabethan society - why did some widows remarry
As protection from coercion and harassment for themselves and their children
Dympna Callaghan - “Webster presents the Duchess not as an………………………………, but as real and fully………..
Oversexed pleasure-seeker
Human
Expand on “I am the Duchess of Malfi still”
Insist on the moral triumph of the Duchess’ stoicism in the face of death
What does the absence of the Duchess in Act 5 suggest
Dympna Callaghan
Insights on the necessity of looking squarely at the aftermath of the male violence to which she has been sacrificed
“Her absence, the gaping wound of the play, encourages us to question a world without women. And if that’s not feminist, then I don’t know what is”
How does Boklund see Julia as
“A parody of the Duchess, designed to undercut and qualify her values…to find a tragic flaw in the Duchess reflected nd confirmed in Julia”
Give a counter-argument to critics suggesting that Julia seems to be a fulfilment of the brother’s degraded vision of the Duchess
Yet very early in 2.4, Julia’s words and stage actions begin to contradict the Cardinal’s version of her
Her speech with its anxious, halting rhythm, betrays the deep inner struggle of a woman who has compromised herself for uncertain gain and finds herself the victim of a cynical and abusive man
Give two readings of stage presentations generally opting for an emphasis on the extreme lasciviousness of Julia
May affirm the satire of the corrupted church - by emphasizing the Cardinal’s sin and hypocrisy
Could also affirm his misogynistic attitude to his mistress as a whore
Those who emphasise the analogies between the duchess and Julia come perilously close to reading the play as a…………………………Those who concentrate on the differences tend to exaggerate the……………..of the Duchess and read the play as a melodrama
Underlying both of these perspectives is another implicit moral judgement - that Julia is meant to be condemned as a wanton,……………., morally………………woman
Cautionary tale
Saintliness
Promiscuous
Reprehensible
Did Julia appear in the original story
NO
Webster clearly thought the character had an important role in the architecture of the plot and the construction of the thematic argument
Give a quote from the Cardinal that presents a constant woman as an impossibility
“To view another spacious world i’th’moon/ And look to find a constant woman there”
Give some context for the Chain of Being
The feudal societies of the Middle Ages, ruled by an aristocracy of landowners, were based on a clear hierarchy
The hierarchy was justified, intellectually, by the idea of nature itself being composed of clear levels
What is the Ptolemaic model of the Universe and what does it link to
The Earth was at the centre of the universe, but also at its lowest point
Power over events radiated down from heaven in distinct levels. Chain of Being
According to the Medieval catholic Church (and Aristotle’s philosophy), everything in the universe had a…….in a divinely planned and………….universe
Place
Unchangeable
Give a quote from Delio about superstition and some analysis
“How superstitiously we mind our evils/The throwing down of salt, or crossing of a hare”
During the Reformation, the Catholic church was criticised for encouraging rituals
Protestants believed that superstitious practices implied a belief in magic + involvement of evil spirits
Give some context for the horoscope
Believed in astrology - our fate is controlled/written in the stars
Protestants = pre-destination
Give a quote from Antonio to Bosola about his malpractice
“You would look up to heaven, but I think The devil that rules the air stands in your light”
Give some Machivllan context
Florentine political philosopher
Suggested that religion could be beneficial as an instrument of domination
What does equivocation mean
To give an oath to confirm something, but can also be understood, through deliberately unclear or ambiguous language to mean the opposite
Used when Garnet member of gunpowder plot) claimed the right to give ambiguous answers during his trial to avoid incriminating himself
What is the significance of Ferdinand entering the Duchess’ room
Enters between the line ‘I entered you into my heart’ and ‘before you would…call for the keys’
The prince inserts himself at the heart of his sister’s passion but also images himself as the recipient of the ‘key’ - being able to enter her body
ENters her private room - seats herself within her innermost privacy, as if he imagens himself within her body
What does Mary Peake suggest about Ferdinand entering the Duchess’ room
“Ferdinand navigates himself into his sister’s sexual experience by physically concealing his presence within her private chamber”
What colour is blood in Frecknall’s interpretation
Black - suggesting a court so corrupt that it has perverted nature
How does Frecknall’s interpretation give the Duchess a sense of vulnerability
Only one to be barefoot in the first half
How does Frecknall’s interpretation present the death of the woman
They loom on stage, the Duchess is particularly potent who haunts her oppressors
Ends on DUchess’ daughter, not son as in original
What does Leah S Marcus state about the Ferdinand’s madness
“As the play progresses, Ferdinand’s madness is increasingly associated with rituals of Italian (and English) courts…
In early performances of the play, when Ferdinand sends madmen…the madmen onstage doubled the courtiers who had sycophantically surrounded Ferdinand before”
What does Kate Aughterson assert about feminity
Saw women’s deaths as a ‘collision between corrupt political conservatism and individual freedom. Furthermore, political corruption os clearly linked to masculinity and individual freedom and justice to femininity”
Give some analysis of Ferdinand’s waxworks
Amplifies the hate felt for Ferdinand
Lot of effort to pull off - highlights the lengths he’s prepared to go to rob the Duchess of her identity
Give some examples of England being enswirled in catholic-protestant tensions
Gunpowder plot
Babington plot
Mary I
Spanish Armada
How did Liz persecute Catholics
Act of Restraints - all Catholics to stay within 5 miles of their home + no large gatherings
Anyone who persuaded a protestant to become a catholic was punishable by death
What does the Astrology being wrong signify
Criticises catholicism + amplifies the idea that we act upon our own free will
Give some context of James I court
The security of having an heir was soon undermined by his extravagant habits + sexually ambiguous interests f the court
James’ court was filled with sycophants with frequent lavish feats to flaunt his wealth
Promoted many courtiers with a group of men specifically chosen because he found them physically attractive
Give some woman context
Continued to live a life subordinated by men, beyond what they requested + made dependant on value relations
Numerous witchcraft accusations are regarded by many feminist historians as being an attack of women and an assertion of male power (most victims = women)
Give a quote that highlight Ferdinand’s madness
“‘Look! What follows me’ - Tis your shadow - ‘Stay it! Let it not haunt me”
Give some lycanthropy context
Stories of wolf-men, as a result of witchcraft or direct demonic intervention
One popular account of a German lycanthrope named Peter Stubbe asserts that Stubbe’s committed incest with his sister while in the shape of a wolf
- Webster makes Ferdinand’s lycanthropy, similarly, a reflection or embodiment of the lust for his sister, but it also resonates with images of spiritual predation, particularly in a Protestant demonisation of Catholicism
Protestant criticism of Catholic church - pope depicted as a wolf
Give some context for remarriages
Not inevitably a recipe for tragedy - a popular topic for city comedy
Webster’s Duchess defies social and sexual orthodoxies in a way not dissimilar of comic widows. What lends itself to strategy in the Duchess’ situation is that unlike her comic counterparts, she is the head of state
What was the overwhelming weight of (male) critical opinion about before the feminist movements of the 1970s + ’80s
The DUchess lacked a centre and focus for its action because critics tended to equate tragic centrality with masculinity
The Duchess thus………………..her society’s notion of proper female…………..both in exercising her own will in a matter of personal and…………..choice and in choosing a husband who is her social……..
Transgresses
Conduct
Sexual
Inferior
What does Dympna Callaghan assert about the brothers
“The Duchess’ brothers are the primary mouthpieces for the misogynistic discourse of the era”
Give a quote from the Duchess complaining about her situation
“Why [she] of all the other princes in the world/Be cased up like a holy relic”
“She is neither a Catholic fetish object nor protestant funeral monument” - Callaghan
The play comes close to representing the lived realities of early modern English widows and the constraints upon their sexual choices
How does the brother’s persecution of the Duchess link to context
Widowed women sometimes suffered harassment from male relatives or neighbours and so were forced to seek protection from a new husband
What does the speed of which the Duchess remarries signify (Callaghan)
“The Duchess capacity to take action and initiative when her capacity to do so is severy restricted by her wider society and culture…Her brothers echo a cultural commonplace”
Webster develops the Duchess’ character while simultaneously utilising and……….the…….discourses around women at the time, which presented them as either chaste……..or………….whores
Resisting
Polarised
Paragons
Lascivious
What does Callaghan state about Webster’s portrayal of the Duchess
“Webster takes on the challenge of representing a woman who is both virtuous and sensual, and who embodies the virtues of a sexually fulfilling married life”
While Bosola is the instrument for the Duchess’ tragedy, after her brave and……death his remorse is evident of the Duchess’…………………….
Stoic
Moral strength
